


Don't Want To Lose Me, Don't Want To Lose You

by Salomonderiel



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Getting Together, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salomonderiel/pseuds/Salomonderiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Coulson’s being stupid, keeping all the – the fix-it people in, in – out of the, the-” </p><p>“The field?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Fitz sniffed, and Mack pretended like he couldn’t feel the silent tears sinking through his shirt. “He needs minimum of one, he can’t bench all of us.” </p><p>Mack froze. “Hold up,” he said, pulling back from Fitz abruptly, looking down at him with confusion. “Are we talking about you still, or have you moved on to me?” </p><p>Fitz flushed slightly, jaw clenching before he started on the rant that Mack had heard several times over the last few weeks. “It’s stupid, you’re not – you’re safe, and it doesn't make sense to bench you for stuff you didn’t do!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I don't want to break all alone

**Author's Note:**

> Been meaning to post some mitz for a fair while, but my LAPTOP BROKE so all the stuff I started were lost, so I began a new piece. Tada! 
> 
> Title very loosely from Christina Perri's 'I don't want to break', which is currently my main mitz song. So very good. 
> 
> This chapter's a bit miscommunicationy. Next chapter should be clearer, funnier, and up very soon!

It wasn’t a good day.

Hunter had been landed in medical with a fractured shin, Bobbi was having various cuts disinfected, some stitched, and Skye was refusing to talk to anyone. May was trying to reassure her through her bedroom door.

Part of the problem had been misinformation, part had been Skye losing control of whatever it was that had been done to her in the Kree city. Part of it was down to malfunctioning equipment.

Coulson hadn’t said anything to them, but he didn’t need to. The lab was utterly silent, Jemma standing by a table in one corner, Fitz in the other. Mack was lingering by the door, for once not sure what to do to diffuse the tension.

“I should have – have -”

“No, Fitz,” Jemma cut in, not even looking at him. “It’s not your fault – they wouldn’t have known what to do, even if you _could_ have articulated the instructions.”

Fitz didn’t respond immediately, jaw clenching and one hand spasming as it gripped the back of the chair before him. “I wasn’t – I didn’t _mean_ that. I didn’t – I meant – do, did you think it was because of my, my _disability?”_

Even now, Jemma couldn’t stay collected when Fitz’s hypoxia was brought up. Especially when it was Fitz referring to it. Especially on days as bad as this. Mack stepped out of the way as she left the room, eyes starting to shine with tears.

He let Fitz fume in silence, beat himself up for a few more seconds, before finally placing himself at his side. “That was harsh, Turbo,” he said. “She didn’t mean-”

“I couldn’t look at her,” Fitz muttered, looking down at where one hand was holding the chair with far less force, far less certainty than the other. He clenched his good hand once, before letting it go. “I couldn’t – she, she reminded me of-”

“Things going wrong?” Mack offered, frowning when Fitz nodded. “Yeah, but it really wasn’t your fault,” he said, casually pulling the chair to the side, and leaning against the desk. “No one could have seen that-”

“I could have,” Fitz countered, furious. “I could have, if I-”

Mack sighed out, relaxing slightly. At least now he had a bit of an idea what the problem here was. “Is this about you going out into the field again?” he asked.

“No!” Fitz yelled back quickly, finally looking up and at Mack. His eyes were slightly red, puffed. He’d been crying, but that wasn’t surprising. Most people had. As Mack continued to stare him down, refusing to let Turbo beat around the topic, Fitz eventually caved. “Maybe,” he conceded, eyes falling back down to the floor. As he too often did these days, he wrapped his arms around himself, as if it was the only way to hold himself together. Or to reassure himself he was still in one piece. “But I guess, after last time I – I mean, I did what I was supposed to, but it didn’t – Trip -”

At Trip’s name, he fell silent again, and that Mack couldn’t blame him for. “Hey,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and pulling Fitz towards him. It took Fitz a few moments to relax, to uncurl his arms from around his own torso, and hesitantly hug Mack back. “Look, that was nothing to do with you, and nothing to do with why you weren’t in the field today, okay? We might have some impressive people on board, but as far as I’m aware none of them are psychics, we weren’t to know that the equipment would fail and that they’d need your magic fingers to fix them. Okay?”

Fitz didn’t answer that. And he didn’t release his hold on Mack’s waist, but Mack didn’t mind. Fitz needed comfort, and hell, Mack might need some reassuring at that point too. And for reasons he didn’t want to think of too hard, there was something about holding Fitz that gave him just enough reassurance to keep going.

“Still,” Fitz said eventually, words muffled against Mack’s shirt, “Coulson’s being stupid, keeping all the – the fix-it people in, in – out of the, the-”

“The field?”

“Yeah.” Fitz sniffed, and Mack pretended like he couldn’t feel the silent tears sinking through his shirt. “He needs minimum of one, he can’t bench all of us.”

Mack froze. “Hold up,” he said, pulling back from Fitz abruptly, looking down at him with confusion. “Are we talking about you still, or have you moved on to me?”

Fitz flushed slightly, jaw clenching before he started on the rant that Mack had heard several times over the last few weeks. “It’s _stupid_ , you’re not – you’re _safe_ , and to bench you for stuff you didn’t _do-_ ”

Mack stepped away. “Yeah, yeah, you’ve said before, Turbo,” he said, waving a hand to shut Fitz before he got started. “But I’ve got to say, I think Coulson’s got a point.” He’d expected Fitz to scoff at him. He hadn’t expected the look of sheer horror and rage Fitz gave him. Confused, he blinked, trying to remember if he’d said something too horrifying. “What? What did I say?”

Fitz almost tripped over a stool as he all but stormed over to Mack. “You’ve got to stop, stop – uh, you can’t _be_ like that! You can’t! You’re – you’re not allowed to, okay?”

“Like what?” Mack asked, backing up as Fitz continued to advance, looking like he was ready to physical hit sense into him. “Fitz, it’s okay, really, I’m not bothered. I get it. We don’t know that what happened in the city won’t happen again. Hell, even _I_ don’t trust me right now.”

He couldn’t tell if the frustration in Fitz’s eyes was because of him, or because of the words that kept evading him. “You’re always in the lab - you’re not allowed out in the _field_!” Fitz eventually said, the words spilling out from him with more energy than the hesitant tone he usually spoke in. “You’re always in here!”

With that, Mack started to get it. _Please don’t let this be it._ “So, you want me back out in the field?” he asked, watching Fitz’s reaction.

The man almost exploded. “Yes!” he yelled, throwing his arms forwards.

So that _was_ it. “Okay, I get you, Turbo,” Mack said, shrugging. He took another step back. “Sorry, I shoulda guessed. You two want your space back, right?” He turned away, not looking at Fitz. He’d left his jacket on a nearby desk last time he was here – he’d better take it with him this time, hide away in the garage a bit. Fitz had said it once – the lab was his and Simmon’s place. Mack’s was the garage. “You could have just _said_ though, Turbo,” he said, the teasing in the nickname sounding unusually forced. He’d told himself he’d never act like some scorned puppy. But it had never been as hard as this before.

“No, I-”

That caught Mack by surprise. He turned back around, to see Fitz struggling, hands twitching in front of him as he tried to find the words. “No, Fitz, really, you could have said, I would have understood you,” he said, trying to grin. “Friends, yeah? Always got your back, Turbo.”

Fitz looked like he was ready to hit his head against a desk, from sheer exasperation. “No,” he said, weary, “you’re wrong. You’re, _so_ wrong, you’re-” With that, he threw his hands in the air, seeming to give up, walking away.

It wasn’t unusual for Fitz to give up when words just weren’t coming to him, but this – this felt like he’d just pulled the rug out from under Mack. “Okay,” he said, speaking out of shock, auto-pilot taking control of his mouth, speaking from a hollow chest and a sudden realisation that, yeah. Perhaps he’d got everything horrifically wrong. “Sorry, I guess I thought – I’ll back off. Si- Jemma’s your best mate. I’m glad you’ve got her back. Really. I am.”

The nearest door was right behind him. He could get out, go hide in the garage until he could completely reconfigure everything – for everything was based on how he felt about Fitz, how he’d thought Fitz felt about _him_ – and compartmentalize. This wasn’t the end. It just… wasn’t as good as he’d thought it was. He’d pushed their relationship too far. Mack wasn’t Fitz’s best friend.

Before he could escape to sort it all out, to correct himself, Fitz was spinning around to face him, and this time, Mack couldn’t read his expression at all. His hands were clenched by his side, and he licked his lips before yelling across the room to Mack, as if he physically couldn’t contain the words anymore, as if they were a relief to finally say. “I don’t _like_ you!”

With a final look of confusion and annoyance, Fitz stormed out via the far end of the lab.

Mack collapsed onto the nearest chair. His eyes were unfocused, heart thudding, all his energy gone. “Oh,” he breathed. “Well. That changes things.”


	2. I want to break in your arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to say before, but there's some very subtle spoilers for the mid-season finale. Don't worry, they don't give away too much!

Lance Hunter was stuck on a bed in medical. Lance Hunter had one of his legs stuck in a cumbersome plaster-cast. Lance Hunter was undeniable, overwhelmingly bored.

And boy, did he love it.

He didn’t have to take inventories, he didn’t have to fill in paperwork, he was explicitly not allowed to go the gym, so all he had to do was sit in this hospital bed and watch shitty day-time TV. No Jeremy Kyle Show though. What kind of shitty super-spy network plane was this, that it didn’t even have ITV?

There’d been some visitors. Skye, Coulson. Bobbi had been around most of the afternoon, berating him in every way she could possibly conceive, but he’d been injured around her enough times to know that anger was the closest thing she ever really got to genuine affection. She’d had to go and get work done eventually. She’d lead point, so she’d be doing most of the paperwork.

Ha, paperwork. Lance smiled happily as he reached for the remote again.

He was so engrossed in Geordie Shore that he didn’t notice Mack had entered his corner of medical until the big man knocked on the wall. “Hey, anyone home?”

“Buddy!” Lance cried, raising his good arm in joy (he’d pulled a muscle in the other, and one of the doctors had tied it up in a sling that, somehow, was harder to get out than a straight jacket). “Did you bring me grapes?”

That threw Mack for a loop. “Grapes?”

“Yeah, grapes,” Lance repeated. “Y’know, that’s what you do when someone’s in hospital, you bring them grapes.” Mack just nodded, not really responding to what Lance had anticipated as the lead-in to one their infamous ridiculous debates.

Now, Bobbi might call him insensitive, but he wasn’t completely socially inept. “Hey, mate, what’s up?” he asked, shuffling upright and getting the feeling that he was about to drawn into a really intense, deep conversation. “You look like someone’s just been given the death sentence.”

Mack dismissed his concerns with a completely unbelievable wave of his hand and an even less convincing declaration that, “No, nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.”

“Exactly! You’ve seen that I’m fine, so you can stop bringing down the mood, okay?” Lance said, grinning. If Mack wasn’t going to talk, then Lance could at least do what he did best - make people laugh with his usual brand of inane idiocy. “Seriously, stop looking like you’ve just been told your old Auntie Nora just died. Even with us lot, two people dying in the space of a fortnight is rather statistically unlikely.”

Okay, yeah, Bobbi was right, he was completely insensitive. But he knew Mack, and sure enough, the big guy might have been shaking his head but the dark humour had him laughing. “I don’t have an Aunt Nora,” Mack correct him, perching in the chair at the end of Lance’s bed, “and no one’s dying.”

“Then why’re you-” Lance stopped himself mid-sentence, a memory catching his attention. “Wait. I’ve seen that look before,” he said, waggling a finger at where Mack was now collapsed back in the chair, wearing a slightly dazed look. “Where have I seen that look before? What’s going on?”

Mack didn’t respond.

“Yeah, no, that whole ‘silence’ thing isn’t going to work,” Lance said, resorting to a well-tested tactic. “This is where we fall back on the whole thing of me rambling on until you eventually cave and, believe me, I can really keep this up for a-”

“Yeah, okay man, just shut up,” Mack cut in, rolling his eyes. “All it is, is that… Fitz said something.”

Lance hit the bed in victory. “See? How hard was that?” And then his brain caught up with his ears. “Ooohh, the small Scottish one,” he mused, nodding. He caught Mack’s eye, and they exchanged a knowing glance. “So. What was this thing that he said?”

“He said, quote, ‘I don’t like you’,” Mack said, fingers forming the quotation marks as he spoke.

Lance’s honest-to-god first reaction was shock. Fitz liked the guy, everyone knew that. The two were inseparable, and it wasn’t because of Mack. Lance had never known him to trail around anyone, and he’d seen him whipped in more than one relationship. “So… that’s unusual,” he tried, watching Mack’s reaction. The big guy just nodded. “What are you… thinking of doing about that?”

Whatever noise Mack made at that question was somewhere between a disbelieving scoff, and laughter. “Hell, you think I know?” he asked, looking at Lance with shock. “Dude, why do you think I’m hiding in here with you?”

Lance shrugged. “I dunno, I thought it was something to do with my winning personality, but there you go. Optimistic, I know.” Mack laughed again. Lance wasn’t sure whether to take that as an insult or not. “Look,” he said, going for the only logical possibility he could see, “you know what Fitz is like, he can’t… communicate very well, right? So, chances are something got lost in translation.”

Now, Lance was well aware that he was a genius whose talents went severely underappreciated, but he hadn’t expected that his wise words would cause the epiphany that suddenly occurred before him. Mack gasped, eyes staring at Lance with wide horror as he jumped to his feet with almost athletic grace. “He doesn’t know!” he yelled, before running from the room without so much as a ‘get well soon’.

Lance watched him go, shaking his head. “Americans,” he sighed, turning his attention back to Geordie Shore.

***

Twenty minutes later, Lance had moved onto an episode of Jerry Springer. Not as good as Jeremy Kyle - there was a distinct lack of chavs with appalling dental hygiene - but it was close enough.

That was, of course, when Fitz came charging into the room.

“Sorry,” Fitz apologised straight off the bat, “I just-”

“Did you bring grapes?” Lance asked, cutting in before the stuttering explanation could begin. He didn’t have the patience to deal with engineers being idiots and interrupting his show.

Fitz looked confused. “Um… no?”

With a sigh expressing the deepest, most heartfelt disappointment, Lance shook his head. “No one brings grapes anymore,” he muttered. When Fitz just continued to dither, he sighed again, and waved him towards the end of the bed. “Well, sit down, then, you’re making me feel awkward just by looking at you.”

Somehow, Fitz sat down wasn’t any less awkward than Fitz standing up. “That’s the American one, right?” he asked eventually, one hand hesitantly pointing to the TV in the corner.

Lance nodded. “Yeah - not as good as Jeremy Kyle, but as that is, sadly, not an option...” Well aware that his daytime TV boredom was about to become a thing of the past, he located the remote and pressed mute. “Now, my fine, small, Scottish friend, what can I do you for?”

Just as Mack had been, Fitz seemed reluctant to explain. “Uh, say - say, hypothetically, that - someone… said something they didn’t quite mean, and, and made - and upset Mack, what would you - being a friend of Mack’s - what would you advise they do?”

Lance narrowed his eyes at him. “Ah. This would be about the whole ‘I don’t like you!’ thing, then?” he asked, attempting his best Irish accent for the quote. At Fitz’s wince - and Lance was going to assume that was for the topic, not the dreadful accent it was spoken in - Lance nodded. “Yep, I know about that. And I don’t know when I became the resident counsellor for confused engineers, but I’m not too happy about it. Also, I’m going to guess that Mack didn’t find you?”

Fitz slumped even further down into the chair than he’d been before. “I - I’m sort of hiding from him. I don’t - until I - I figure out what I’m, I’m - what should I do?” he groaned, head falling into his hands. He was all but completely horizontal in the chair at this point.

Still not a hundred percent sure what exactly was going on, Lance just shrugged. “Might help if you told me what you what to achieve, Fitz, old boy.”

Vaguely pulling himself a bit more upright, Fitz stared at him with a terrified and confused expression. “I - what do - I want - I don’t want - I - I need to, to-”

Lance didn’t let him suffer for long. “Look,” he said, leaning forwards slightly, “it seems to me - in fact, it’s pretty obvious - that the main problem here is communication, if not only because even though I’ve had both of you vent at me now I still have no fucking clue what’s going on. And I can understand why that’d be particularly hard for you. So, here’s a thought - why don’t you plan what you want to say in advance, write it down or something, so there’s no awkward pauses or wrong words being used. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Fitz echoed. “Yeah…” He reached into his pockets, eventually pulling out what looked like a blueprint for something, finding a blank space to write on. “Do you…”

“Uh, there should be a pen around here somewhere, if that’s what you mean,” Lance muttered, looking around. “Bobbi used it to write obscene things on my cast…” finding it, he threw it to Fitz.

“And, d’you mind if I-”

Lance dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “Just stay as long as you want, as long as you don’t talk over the TV.”

Fitz nodded, chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought and leant over the scrap of paper. Lance reached back for the remote, turning the volume back on.

“...You did know that I reconfigured the settings, right? We get ITV now. Did - did no one tell you?”

“... _What?_ ”

***

It was several hours, many rewrites, and multiple double-checks with both Hunter and Simmons before Fitz was finally ready to go and find Mack. And though both had sent him off with many words of reassurance and confidence (if slightly exasperated after much bothering on Hunter’s behalf) part of Fitz very much wanted to go hide in his room and just pretend that if he ignored the whole thing hard enough then, by tomorrow, it would never have happened, and everything could go back to how it had been before.

But no. Nope. Science - as they knew so far - wouldn’t let that happen. And his luck wasn’t good enough that he’d find and/or discover a means of rewinding time before he’d be forced to come into contact with Mack, so… best to get this over with.

Though he would confess to putting it off for as long as possible. He started in the kitchen, then the lounge and the Xbox, the lab - with a quick break for Simmons to berate him for stalling - before trying Mack’s room, and, eventually, the garage on the Bus.

He was there, working on one of the car’s engines at a worktable. He’d said something, Fitz remembered, about trying to up the horsepower of the SUVs.

And he was singing along to the music player. Fitz knew he liked singing, of course, had heard him humming a few times as he worked, but not like this. Not so obliviously, unaware that someone was listening. He seemed so… happy. And he could sing well.

It took Fitz accidentally knocking some stray piece of metal - looked like a piece of a hubcap - before Mack was aware that he was there. “I - um, sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

As ever, though, Mack didn’t let him finish his apologies. “Nah, it’s cool Turbo, always got time for you,” he said with a grin. “Where’ve you been? I tried looking for you, but eventually ran out of ideas.”

“Yeah, no, I was - I was hiding from you,” Fitz admitted, embarrassed. “I, uh, hid with Hunter in medical.” Mack smiled, shaking his head. “And, um - he told me I should-”

“Hey, listen, I really don’t recommend doing anything Hunter thinks is a good idea-”

“No,” Fitz said, holding up his hands to get Mack to _stop_. He needed to do this, to get this over with. “I - I need to -” he stopped, breathed, and tried again, scrambling in his pockets to find the scrap of paper he’d written it on. “So, I prepared this, this thing-”

As he talked, Mack got to his feet, looking confused, moving away from his work and closer to Fitz. This of course caused Fitz to panic and completely forget what he was meant to say, let alone that it was written on the scrap clenched in his hands.

Mack filled in the silence, like he always did. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the paper, and when Fitz didn’t answer or deter him, he took it from his hands.

Fitz could barely breath as Mack scanned the paper, one of a few people who could actually decipher his ridiculous scrawl.

It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much, most of it crossed or scribbled out, and judging by the speed with which Mack’s eyes were moving he was only skimming it anyway. Eventually - finally - he shook his head, smiling. “Y’know, Turbo,” he said, holding up the paper, “you really didn’t need to do this.”

Fitz’s stomach dropped through the floor. “I - I didn’t? Don’t worry, I - I can just-”

Before he could finish Mack was rolling his eyes, reaching over to press a hand over Fitz’s mouth. “No, my turn. You didn’t need to explain because I already knew.”

Mouth blocked, Fitz hoped his confusion was conveyed sufficiently through the rest of his face.

Mack laughed at his attempts to talk through facial expressions alone. “Hell yeah I knew! I speak Turbo. ‘I didn’t solve it today’ meant you solved it a different day. ‘I can’t fix this machine’ means you have another machine that does the same thing but better. And, as this slightly convoluted note just proved to me,” he said, shaking the note again, “‘I don’t like you’ doesn’t mean that you don’t like me. It means that you… more than like me.” At that, smile wider than Fitz had ever seen it, Mack finally moved his hand from Fitz’s mouth. “Though I’ll admit that I got confused earlier in that conversation,” Mack added quickly, “I did get _that_ part.”

“I love you,” Fitz blurted out. His skin immediately turned bright red, which just served to make him more embarrassed. It didn’t help that Mack was just staring at him, smiling, not saying a bloody word. “Eh, uh - that’s alright, isn’t it? I mean, you kind of haven’t said anything about it.”

“Alright?” Mack echoed, still smiling so hard that Fitz was sure his cheeks should be hurting. “Man, and they told me you were clever.”

Fitz had never been kissed before. He’d kissed people, but he’d never been kissed. Never had someone pull him in, their hand holding his head and tilt his head up for a kiss. Never had someone press their lips against his.

He was finding he rather liked it.

It was only quick, before Mack pulled back again, looking down at him expectantly.

Fitz shook his head. “No, this won’t work,” he said, pulling away.

Before Mack could ask what was wrong, Fitz was back, pulling a chair with him. Without a second’s hesitation, he was standing on the chair, grabbing the collar of Mack’s tattered, oil-stained overshirt and roughly tugging him back for a kiss.

He made sure this one wasn’t quick, or chaste.

When they stopped - more for air than anything - Mack was now looking up at him, and he was laughing. Hesitantly, first smiling, then grinning, Fitz found himself laughing back.

“Hey, Turbo?” Mack asked quietly, as if it was a secret.

Fitz leaned forwards, pressing their foreheads together, stealing a quick kiss as he did so. “Yeah?”

“I don’t like you, too.” **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope the ending was acceptable. 
> 
> For anyone interested, the song I imagined Mack was singing along to in a glorious deep voice was 'Listen To The Man' by George Ezra, with the link provided thus:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHEpi1m89t8


End file.
